09/05/2018 Washington D.C. (International Christian Concern) – The only mistake that Pastor Amos Kanula and the congregation of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God (PAG), Zanzibar, made was legally buying a plot of land from a willing seller. They were planning on using this land to build a church. That was back in 2004, and they still aren’t finished. They had built a church, but it was destroyed a few years later. Since then, they have been in and out of courtrooms to fight for retention of the land and the right to resume construction of the unfinished building. The court on the semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar ordered construction to be stopped on August 26, 2017.

“Today is exactly a year after the court issued a ruling to stop construction on our unfinished church building here in Chikwani, Zanzibar. The reason is that some Muslim businessmen claim that the land on which our church stands doesn’t belong to us and we should not develop the land further or even complete the remaining construction work,” lamented Pastor Amos Kanula.

The court order came after the church had already been destroyed once by local Muslims. The mob also claimed that the party that sold the land to the church was not the rightful owner.

“This group of Muslims wants to erect a mosque on our church property that we purchased in 2004 and [has] become a thorn in our flesh,” Pastor Amos said. “When we first constructed a temporary structure for worship, they came at night and pulled it down. We built another one and worshiped in it for three years after which they also destroyed and, in addition, took us to court. That was in 2007.”

When International Christian Concern (ICC) visited the church in 2015, the congregation was embroiled in a court battle for six years after the group of Muslims filed a legal complaint imploring the congregation to stop church construction until the land possession issue was resolved. According to Pastor Amos, this has not changed.